WASHINGTON—FEMA has announced details surrounding its planned national emergency alert test Wednesday, Oct. 4. Conducted in conjunction with the FCC, the national test will consist of two portions, testing Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) to mobile devices and Emergency Alert System (EAS) alerts to TV and radio. Both tests are scheduled to begin at approximately 2:20 p.m. ET.

This will be the third nationwide test for WEA alerts to cellphones, but the second test to all WEA-compatible cellular devices. The test message will display in either English or in Spanish, depending on the language settings of the wireless handset. This will be the seventh nationwide EAS test.

FEMA and the FCC are coordinating with EAS participants, wireless providers, emergency managers and other stakeholders in preparation for this national test to minimize confusion and maximize the public safety value of the test.

The purpose of the test is to ensure that the systems continue to be effective means of warning the public about emergencies, particularly those on the national level. In case the Oct. 4 test is postponed, due to widespread severe weather or other significant events, the back-up testing date is Oct. 11.

The WEA portion of the test will be initiated using FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), a centralized internet-based system administered by FEMA that enables authorities to send authenticated emergency messages to the public through multiple communications networks. The WEA test will be administered via a code sent to cell phones.

This year the EAS message will be disseminated as a Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) message via the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System-Open Platform for Emergency Networks (IPAWS-OPEN).

All wireless phones should receive the message only once. The following can be expected from the nationwide WEA test:

• Beginning at approximately 2:20 p.m. ET, cell towers will broadcast the test for approximately 30 minutes. During this time, WEA-compatible wireless phones that are switched on, within range of an active cell tower, and in a geographic area where the wireless provider participates in WEA, should be capable of receiving the test message.
• For consumers, the message that appears on their phones will read: “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.”
• Phones with the main menu set to Spanish will display: “ESTA ES UNA PRUEBA del Sistema Nacional de Alerta de Emergencia. No se necesita acción.”
• Similar to when your phone receives an Amber Alert, the WEA alert tone is generally only played when the alert is initially received by the phone and on some devices stops as soon as the user clicks a button.
• If a phone is off before the test alert is sent and not turned back on until after the WEA Test expires (approximately 30 minutes), the phone should not get the test message.

•  The EAS portion of the test is scheduled to last approximately one minute and will be conducted with the participation of radio and television broadcasters, cable systems, satellite radio and television providers and wireline video providers.
• The test message will be similar to the regular monthly EAS test messages with which the public is familiar. It will state: “This is a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, covering the United States from 14:20 to 14:50 hours ET. This is only a test. No action is required by the public." 

WEA alerts are created and sent by authorized federal, state, local, tribal and territorial government agencies through IPAWS to participating wireless providers, which deliver the alerts to compatible handsets in geo-targeted areas. To help ensure that these alerts are accessible to the entire public, including people with disabilities, the alerts are accompanied by a unique tone and vibration.

FEMA and the FCC warned TV and radio broadcasters not to include the tones or Attention Signals in broadcast TV or radio coverage about the Nationwide Emergency Alert Test being conducted on Oct. 4. Doing so could result in a violation of federal regulations, which prohibit the use of Emergency Alert System codes (which are audible tones) or the EAS and WEA Attention Signals, or simulations of them, except in actual emergencies, authorized tests of the EAS, or authorized Public Service Announcements (PSAs).

A test date for the next national EAS test will be announced soon.

TV Tech sister brand Radio World has confirmed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will conduct the next national test of the Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alerts this year.

The most recent national EAS test was in 2021 and showed improvement over two years prior, according to a subsequent report by the Federal Communications Commission.

“Receipt and retransmission rates increased, while reported monitored source complications markedly decreased,” the FCC said then. But technical glitches highlighted the importance of those EAS stations that are monitored by many others, the FCC concluded.

Read about the FCC’s findings after the 2021 test.

“It is critically important that those EAS participants that are widely monitored use testing to ensure their EAS equipment is in reliable working order.”

The 2021 test — performed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in coordination with the FCC — used only the broadcast-based distribution system, the so-called “EAS daisy chain,” and did not involve the internet-based IPAWS system.

In September of 2022 the FCC partnered with 37 emergency management agencies to conduct localized Wireless Emergency Alert tests. (Read its post-test findings.)

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World. 

LYNDONVILLE, N.Y.—Digital Alert Systems last week reached out to users of its DASDEC EAS encoder-decoder to assure them that units using v3.0x or v.4.0 DASDEC software require no action to accommodate an update to IPAWS Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Both DASDEC v3.0x and v4.0 follow FCC requirements for the National Periodic Test, the company said.

This year’s National Periodic Test is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 7, at 2:20 p.m. EDT. In the event of inclement weather, Wednesday, Aug. 21, has been chosen as a backup date.

Writing to DASDEC users, Ed Czarnecki, senior director of strategy and government affairs at the company, said Digital Alert Systems has never released a fee-based software update solely to accommodate a regulatory requirement or for compliance purposes. Nor does the company charge for support.

The company released v4.0 of DASDEC software as an optional, although “strongly recommended,” upgrade, he added.

Version 3.0 will function properly for the NPT test and the FEMA TLS update to IPAWs. It also will accept a certificate upgrade for FEMA IPAWS when that becomes available in November, he said.

Digital Alert Systems has released a document for broadcasters, cable TV operators and others to use to prepare for the National Periodic Test.

WASHINGTON—EAS participants in Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as some in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas, have been granted an extra six weeks to submit their EAS Test Reporting System results due to the impact of the recent hurricanes. The initial report on the EAS test scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 27, will be due for affected stations by Nov. 13, rather than the original deadline of Sept. 27.

Read the full story on TVT’s sister publication B&C.

SAN FRANCISCO—Just as the Rolling Stones jumped in with “Start Me Up,” they were stopped. And that was just as it should be.

Wednesday’s nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System may have stopped Mick from promising that he’ll never stop, never stop as he sang on satellite radio at 11:20 a.m. California time, but comments continue to roll in from all quarters of the nation—from both radio and television broadcasters—that the EAS IPAWS test seems to have widely met its goal, though there are a fair number of stations who have experienced some issues.

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission reported that it had heard from more than 22,000 stations following the Sept. 28 test. The test itself seems to have come through in most cases clearly and audibly.

For example, in a sample of stations from Nebraska, Mississippi, Texas and Maryland, engineers reported that the national IPAWS EAS test came through correctly and on-time. Several broadcasters were frankly surprised that the test came through so smoothly.

“Much to my amazement, it worked well,” said Chuck Conrad, station owner of KZQX(FM) KDOK(AM) and KEBE(AM) in Texas. “The test went as scheduled and sounded very good.”

Conrad was one broadcaster who said that that the reporting process via the FCC’s new ETRS database went off without a hitch for him, despite the thousands of station personnel that were expected to log on to the site near-simultaneously. “Reporting only took a couple of minutes,” Conrad said. “I was expecting a log jam, but it didn't happen.” Other TV stations reported the same, with a station in The Dalles, Ore., receiving the test reporting success logging into ETRS about 15 minutes after the test, and successfully submitting both Forms Two and Three.

Not everyone had smooth sailing however. Others ran into hurdles both with the test itself and with the database.

The broadcaster Three Angels Broadcasting Network, a radio and television network based in Illinois, had trouble with the software on its EAS device. “It said it forwarded the test, but didn't really do it,” he said. “We had to reboot the box before it would forward properly.”

Hall Communications, which owns 21 radio stations in the East, ran into a couple of roadblocks. Edd Monskie, vice president of engineering, said that the test came through, but in one case the test was forwarded in from two radio stations simultaneously, and the EAS device was not able to handle both at once. “One was logged, the other was lost, but we confirmed that both were sent,” he said.

Monskie said that the registration process within ETRS “failed miserably.”

“It had problems just like the Form One creation,” he said. “The batch file uploading was not working at all from 2:20 p.m. up through 8 p.m., when I finally finished submitting all of the Form Two information, individually station by station.”

And even that ran slowly at times, Monskie said. “Some submissions had to be done two and three times before it was successful. Hopefully the batch file uploading system will be working before the deadline for Form Three!” Monskie, for one, said the failure of the submission system was not a surprise.

Several engineers said the difficulties were somewhat expected since, after all, this was only a test.

Dick Lamberson with WDBW(LP) in Port St. Joe, Fla., said his station wasn’t able to participate in the test because his EAS unit went kaput two days before, possibly because of lightning damage. Another station in Florida reported that only alert tones came through and not the audio, also possibly due to a lightning storm. Others, including several low-power radio stations, reported problems receiving the code at all, which was possibly be due to software that hadn’t yet been updated.

There have also been some reports of tests that didn’t go off at all.

It has been reported that station KIRO-TV in Seattle did not see the test come through one of its two EAS units. It was also reported that several television stations in Los Angeles did not broadcast video crawls of the test. Several sources said that KTLA, KTTV, KVME and CNN in the Los Angeles area did not air the EAS alert. TV Technology has reached out to the stations for comments.